News at UI Health

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association (AHA/ASA) recognized UI Health with three Get With The Guidelines® Achievement Awards for its quality and commitment to providing effective care and treatment, using the most advanced procedures available, for stroke, heart failure, and cardiac resuscitation.

UI Health was awarded the Get With The Guidelines®–Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Plus and Advanced Therapy — the highest level of recognition from the AHA/ASA — and the Get With The Guidelines^®–Target: Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award. This is the sixth consecutive year UI Health has received the top stroke award and the fourth consecutive year it has achieved the heart failure designation. UI Health also was recognized with the Get With The Guidelines^® Resuscitation Bronze Award. Following up-to-date, research-based guidelines for the treatment of these conditions ultimately leading to more lives saved, shorter recovery times, and fewer readmissions to the hospital.

To qualify for Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Plus and Advanced Therapy, hospitals must meet quality measures developed to reduce the time between the patient's arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke. Hospitals recognized with Target: Stroke Honor Roll Advanced Therapy designation meet door-to-device times in at least 50% of applicable patients within 90 minutes for direct arriving and within 60 minutes for emergency transport.

UI Health earned Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award by meeting specific criteria that improves medication adherence, provides early follow-up care and coordination, and enhances patient education. The goal is to reduce hospital readmissions and help patients improve their quality of life in managing this chronic condition. To qualify for Target: Type 2 Diabetes Honor Roll, hospitals must meet quality measures developed with more than 90 % of compliance for 12 consecutive months for the “Overall Diabetes Cardiovascular Initiative Composite Score.”

With intentional work by its Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee, UI Health achieved the Resuscitation Bronze Award for working towards improving care for patients who experience an in-hospital resuscitation event or received post cardiac arrest care following an in-hospital or out-of-hospital event. To qualify, hospitals must demonstrate at least 85% compliance in resuscitation quality and reporting measures such as percent of events with less than 1 minute to first assisted ventilation, chest compressions and defibrillation shock provided, average ventilation and chest compression rate, and survival rates of patients with pulseless events.

Research has shown that hospitals adhering to clinical measures through the Get With The Guidelines^® quality-improvement initiatives can often see fewer readmissions and lower mortality rates. These notable accomplishments were made possible by the passion and dedication of the numerous disciplines that care for the stroke and heart patients at UI Health.